Day 13 – Don’t Squander the Early Morning

Sean McCabe |July 13, 2016

This has been one of the best days yet. I don’t know if it was the getting up at 4:30am, the running, the 5,000 words, the awesome story I wrote that made me smile, or the fact that there are only two chapters left.

It was a good day.

Almost there.

Video Recap:

Fall Asleep Time: 10:15pm

Wake Time: 4:30am

Total Sleep: 6hr, 15min

Run: Yes

Writing Start Time: 6:00am

Writing End Time: 4:45pm

Words Written: 5,251

Total Words: 69,761

What’s all this about?

I’m writing a book in a month and I’m journaling every single day to share the process. The book is called Overlap: Getting from the life you have to the life you want.

Don’t Squander the Early Morning

I started by waking up at 6am, and over the course of many weeks, worked my way back to 4:30am.

If you manage to wake up early, you feel like you have all the time in the world. You have such a head start on the day that you think, “I’ll just go check my feeds… and a little bit of the news… and my email… and I’ll still be ahead—I woke up early!”

Next thing you know, 6am turns into 9am and you’ve got nothing done.

Today wanted to become one of those days and I was determined not to let it. I made a choice. I drew up a plan, stuck to it, and today when super productive.

When you wake up early, that is your time. That’s the time you have to get your most important work done. It’s not the time for you to be inundated with what everyone else wants to distract you with.

Instead of asking, “What does the world have for me?” ask, “What do I have for the world?”

The early morning time is precious. It’s quiet, you’re focused, you have the charge of sleep, and your brain has been processing the three tasks you wrote down last night in your subconscious (you did write down your three most important tasks for today last night, right?).

There’s a huge difference between writing at night and writing first thing in the morning. Things you’re exposed to during the day will cloud your thinking. They weigh on your mind. In the morning, you don’t have that extra baggage.

Yes, you’ll be groggy at first, but right when you wake up is the best time to do the most important work of your day. Your mind is doing a lot of work for you while you’re sleeping. It’s processing things for you.

Sleeping charges your body and you can maximize this charge by using it on the most important work right when you wake up.

Kill the Notifications—KILL THEM WITH FIRE 🔥

Schedule the Do Not Disturb mode on your phone to last until 8am or 9am. This way you’re not bombarded with notifications when you wake up.

Don’t go looking for notifications either. It’s critical that you keep yourself from consuming before you produce.

Producing must be the first thing you do. It sets the tone for the entire day.

You are establishing the fact that you are in charge and you are the maker today. You’re not going to squander the charge of sleep by consuming what someone else has produced.

Premature consumption will kill the production—this includes your inbox, feeds, subscriptions, and notifications of any kind.